Friday, February 10, 2006

Anne Applebaum

The Newsweek affair continues to bother me, because of the widespread assumption, perpetuated on the Right, that the magazine (with which I have no personal association) 'lied' in order to smear American soldiers, and therefore deliberately endangered our troops. In fact, they repeated a story - about throwing a Koran in a toilet - which came from Guantanmo inmates, and erroneously claimed the story would be confirmed by an official investigation. That's very, very different from lying in a deliberate attempt to endanger Americans.

What, I ask, is the difference between an error and a lie when you want the error to be true badly enough that your judgement dismisses any argument that a rational person would consider before committing themselves?

THAT is why Newsweek lied. Like Dan Rather and the pre-election smear on Bush, they couldn't, couldn't, consider any alternative because they wanted it so badly to be true.